For the time being the music in the drawing-room had stopped and David
and Caroline were deep in an animated conversation.

"The trouble about it is that I am about to have my light put out," David
was complaining as he sat on the piano-stool, glaring at a vase of
unoffending roses on a table. "Being a ray of sunshine around the house
for a sick poet is no job for a runabout child like me."

"But he's so much better now, David, that I should think you would be
perfectly happy. Though of course you are still a little uneasy about
him." As Caroline Darrah spoke she swayed the long-stemmed rose she held
in her hand and tipped it against one of its mates in the vase.

"Uneasy, nothing! There's not a thing in the world the matter with him;
ribs are all in commission and his collar-bone hitched on again. It's
just a case of moonie sulks with him. He never was the real glad boy, but
now he runs entirely to poetry and gloom. He won't go anywhere but over
here to chew book-rags with the major or to read goo to Phoebe, which she
passes on to you. Wish I'd let him die in the swamps; chasing away to
Panama for him was my mistake, I see." And David ruffled a young rose
that drooped confidingly over toward him.

"Why did he ever go to Panama? Why does he build bridges and things?
Other people like you and me can do that sort of thing; but he--," and
Caroline Darrah raised her eyes full of naive questioning.

"Heavens, woman, poetry never in the world would grub-stake six feet of
husky man! But that's just like you and Phoebe and all the other women.
You would like to feed me to the alligators, but the poet must sit in the
shade and chew eggs and grape juice. You trample on my feelings, child,"